Physician-patient race concordance from the physician perspective

The benefits of racial/ethnic physician-patient concordance have been cited to support increasing the number of minority physicians. Few studies have examined the rates at which physicians of different race/ethnicity groups or specialties see concordant visits. We aim to determine whether differences exist in rates at which physicians of different race/ethnicity groups and physician specialties see visits by patients of concordant race/ethnicity.

We used data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, 2001-2006, a nationally representative survey of visits to private physician's offices. For physicians of each race/ethnicity group, the percentage of visits by patients in each race/ethnicity group was calculated. A concordant visit was defined as one in which a physician in a particular race/ethnicity group saw a patient of the some race/ethnicity group. Concordance rates were calculated overall, and for visits to primary care, medical specialties, and surgical specialties individually.

White physicians see a higher percentage of concordant visits than any other race/ethnicity of physician (84.3%, p < 0.001 vs. all others), followed by Hispanic physicians and non-Hispanic black physicians, who had statistically similar rates (50.0%, and 46.8%, p > 0.05 for comparison), with non-Hispanic Asian physicians having the lowest rate of concordant visits (14.5%, p < 0.001 vs. all others). Minority surgical and medical specialists have significantly lower rates of concordant visits (33.4% and 33.6% respectively) compared to minority primary care physicians (49.5%, p < 0.001 for both comparisons).

Concordance rates from the physician perspective differ by physician race/ethnicity and by physician specialty.